Monday, February 4, 2019
One Month Story-telling of My Job/Internship in Madrid
Just to clarify what I am doing in Madrid. I am a language assistant which is known as an “auxiliar de conversación” in Spain. It isactually aprogram that has been around for more than ten years. It is something offered by the Spanish government inviting native English speakers to work as a language assistant in Spain with a monthly stipend and benefits such as medical and dental insurance. So, BYU has a good connection with Spain, they gave BYU special permission to allow their students to participate in the program. Normally the program is 10 months long and, in this case, BYU come in when there is 6 whole months left in the school year. BYU makes this program possible for their students since they allow students to do it for academic internship credit which goes towards a degree that a student is working on. I am studying Spanish with a minor in international cinema and this language assistant program actually counts towards my Spanish degree. Besides that, I am an employee in Madrid, Spain just with special privileges through the language assistant program. It is actually open to everyone. Every February the application opens and closes on April. I won’t go into how the application process works, I just think it’s neat that college graduates can apply for it and come out to Spain to teach if accepted.
Language assistants are technically not teachers. We are presented as a professor to the children in the school and the whole school recognizes us as another professor in the school. However, we technically assistant teachers which is something that is common for a student working on getting their teaching certification. We work with different age groups and different classrooms. It usually comes down to a teacher of a classroom who conducts the class and they use the language assistants as a resource to work with the kids’ oral English skills. The age level from kids usually will be first through 6thgraders.
In terms of my responsibilities, I work with 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5thand 6thgraders. The 5thgraders are probably the hardest class to help out with English because the 5thgraders I work with have a bad level in English and they do not want to talk or practice. The best class is the third graders since they are proficient and love to use me as a resource to better assist them. There isn’t much new to say than what I have already explained.
I think that this program is a great way to try out the teaching route if someone wants to go into the education system.
Other than that, I will need to write and dedicate more blogs about what I am doing in the language assistant program.
Sincerely,
Sal Galvan
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| Plaza Mayor (Calle Toledo) |
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